Victorian Poets and the Changing Bible

299 Pages·2011·2.92 MB·English

by  Charles LaPorte

Victorian Poets
and the
Changing Bible
Victorian Literature and Culture Series
Jerome J. McGann and Herbert F. Tucker, Editors
Victorian Poets
and the
Changing Bible
(cid:14)
Charles LaPorte
University of Virginia Press Charlottesville and London
University of Virginia Press
© 2011 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
First published 2011
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
LaPorte, Charles, 1972-
Victorian poets and the changing Bible / Charles LaPorte.
p. cm. — (Victorian literature and culture series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8139-3158-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8139-3165-4 (e-book)
1. English poetry—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Religion and poetry. 3. Bible
and literature. 4. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—History—19th century. 5. Bible—
Infl uence. 6. Bible—In literature. 7. Literature and society—Great Britain—History—19th
century. 8. Great Britain—Intellectual life—19th century. I. Title.
PR595.R4.L37 2011
821'.809—dc22
2011012397
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. “Mrs. Browning’s Gospel” and the Art of Revelation 23
2. Tennyson’s Precious Method of Interpretation 67
3. Clough’s Devil in the Details 111
4. Robert Browning’s Sacred and Legendary Art 153
5. George Eliot’s Fits of Poetry 189
Conclusion 231
Notes 239
Bibliography 263
Index 277

Acknowledgments
This book has been a long time in the making and accumulated more debts
than I can quickly enumerate. It was made possible through funding and
research support from the University of Michigan, Vanderbilt University,
and the University of Washington. Colleagues and mentors at all of those
institutions have been wonderfully supportive. Thanks fi rst and foremost to
Yopie Prins, who has inspired and strongly shaped my thinking about Vic-
torian poetics. Particularly warm thanks also go to Martha Vicinus, Ralph
Williams, and Julie Ellison for their extensive support and help with this
research in its early stages. I also feel a special debt of gratitude to UW col-
leagues who have read and off ered detailed and insightful comments on one
or more chapter draft s: Marshall Brown, Gary Handwerk, and Henry Staten.
Colleagues at other institutions who have volunteered similarly generous aid
include Kirstie Blair, Linda Hughes, and Cynthia Scheinberg. Tricia Lootens
helped me to develop key passages in the introduction in particular. Jason
Rudy gave me shrewd readings of several chapter draft s and a much-n eeded
source of moral support. Joseph LaPorte off ered fraternal advice and a phi-
losopher’s perspective on some of the central ideas.
Among many friends, colleagues, and former colleagues whose conver-
sations have helped me think through key issues related to the work, please
let me thank Joseph Butwin, Kathleen Blake, Jay Clayton, the late David
DeLaura, Carolyn Dever, Richard Dunn, Ella Dzelzainis, James Epstein,
Jacqueline George, Erik Gray, Nicholas Halmi, Gillian Harkins, Emily Har-
rington, Mary-C atherine Harrison, Kali Israel, Marjorie Levinson, Meredith
Martin, Christopher Matthews, Elizabeth Miller, Mona Modiano, Ji- Hyae
Park, Adela Pinch, Sheshalatha Reddy, Brian Reed, Jessica Roberts, Cath-
erine Robson, David Ruderman, Mark Schoenfi eld, John Su, and Carolyn
viii (cid:14) Acknowledgments
Williams. For help with biblical Greek, in particular, I would like to thank
Jay A ultman-M oore and Meilee Bridges. For periodic aid with my German,
thanks to Andrea Boboc and Marshall Brown.
I am deeply grateful to the staff of the University of Virginia Press, in-
cluding Cathie Brettschneider, humanities editor, and Morgan Myers, my
project editor. Special thanks go to the Victorian Literature and Culture Se-
ries editors, Jerome J. McGann and Herbert F. Tucker, for their support of
this monograph, as well as for their insightful readings. My debt to Tucker
runs particularly deep, since his virtuosic teaching fi rst inspired me with a
passion for nineteenth- century poetics. Last, but not least, I am very grateful
to my copyeditor, Colleen Romick Clark.
Some of the material that appears here was fi rst presented at the NASSR
conference held at the University of Western Ontario in August of 2002,
at the NVSA conference held at American University in April of 2005, at
the Victorians Institute conference held at the University of North Carolina
at Greensboro in April of 2005, at the VSAWC Conference held at Simon
Fraser University in October of 2005, at the Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Bicentenary Celebration held at Baylor University in March of 2006, at the
Victorian Division session of the MLA conference in Philadelphia in De-
cember of 2006, at the “Victorian Genres” symposium at the UC Santa Cruz
Dickens Universe in August of 2007, at the Tennyson Society International
Bicentenary Conference held at the University of Lincoln, UK, in July of
2009, at the Transatlantic Poetics in the Nineteenth Century Conference held
at the University of Pennsylvania in March of 2010, and at the Transa tlantic
Literature Group of the University of Maryland, also in March of 2010. I re-
main grateful to the organizers of all of these conferences and events for the
opportunity to develop this work.
I have also benefi ted from assistance at a number of libraries and ar-
chives. Thanks to Faye Christenberry and the University of Washington
libraries, Judy Avery and the University of Michigan libraries, the Heard
Library at Vanderbilt University, the British Library, the Bodleian Library,
and the Pierpont Morgan Library. Particular thanks go to Rita Patteson and
the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University for giving me access
to EBB’s draft s and correspondence, and to the National Library of Scotland
for giving me access to Alexander Main’s half of the Eliot / Main correspon-
dence.
The Pickersgill portrait of Elizabeth Barrett Barrett is reproduced by gra-
cious permission of its owner, Captain G. E. Moulton- Barrett. Philip Kelley
Acknowledgments (cid:14) ix
has very kindly helped me with the reproduction. Susan Casteras, Sandra
Donaldson, Barbara Neri, Stephen Prickett, and Melvin Schuetz all helped
me to locate my images.
A UW Royalty Research Fund Award in 2007–8 was particularly helpful
in developing material that appears in the introduction. I am also grateful to
the journals Victorian Poetry and Victorian Literature and Culture for allow-
ing me to publish revised and extended versions (in chapters 4 and 5) of ar-
guments previously made elsewhere: “George Eliot, the Poetess as Prophet,”
in Victorian Literature and Culture 31, no. 1 (2003): 159–79, copyright 2003
Cambridge University Press, reprinted with permission; and “Sacred and
Legendary Artists: Anna Jameson and Barrett Browning in the Hagiography
of Pompilia,” in Victorian Poetry 39, no. 4 (2001): 551–72, copyright 2001
West Virginia University Press, reprinted with permission.
Lastly, I would like to thank my parents, my brothers and sisters, my
father- in- law, and my two beautiful boys for sustaining my spirits during
a long writing process. And I thank Colette Moore, my love, who might
not otherwise have spent so many evenings rehearsing tortuous arguments
about the evolution of Victorian poetics.